It's one of the first questions we get asked when speaking about the possibility of living long-term in Nicaragua, and in a Nicaraguan election year the concern becomes even more portentious: "What would happen if Daniel Ortega won the presidency?"

In November 2006 Nicaragua will again vote for its president, and Daniel Ortega is again running, so the question is inevitable. Here's a recent Washington Post article about the subject, and a couple of comments.

When Ortega asked for a moment of silence to honor the most recent Sandinista luminary to die this year, there was an awkward ripple through the crowd. No one needed reminding that Managua's folksy, beloved former mayor, Herty Lewites, 66, had been expelled from the Sandinista party for challenging Ortega and was running for president on the MRS's ticket when he suffered a fatal heart attack earlier this month. Indeed, so many former Sandinistas have become disaffected with Ortega that for the first time since the revolution they held an alternative anniversary commemoration in the nearby city of Masaya. "Daniel and his group don't fulfill their promises," Victor Hugo Tinoco, a leading member of the MRS, said in an interview in Managua afterward. "The majority of them have become millionaires. They are now just a powerful economic group whose only goal is to protect its interests by using anti-democratic means to control the party, and by using false leftist speech and inflammatory anti-American rhetoric to gain the support of Nicaraguan society."

Read the rest of the article at the Washington Post.

Every Nicaraguan I know, including several that supported the FSLN back in the day has a strong sense of disappointment in Daniel Ortega, so if he's able to gather that much support it's because his political base has changed over the last two decades. And none of those people thinks Nicaragua would ever go back to the way it was during the Revolution. That said, Chavez is a firestarter and his influence elsewhere in Latin America is not to be understated, so the question is to Mr. Ortega himself: "Do ya feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya? ". No one knows exactly what to expect from an Ortega presidency, but most folks - including Nicaraguans - feel confident it wouldn't be what it was the last time.

Before anyone cashes in on their new properties and heads for the hills, however, let it be said that a lot of San Juan del Sur property is being developed by former Sandinistas themselves including many from the highest echelons of the old Sandinista government. Do potential investors run the risk of expropriations? Not likely. Would they be forced to hear a lot of hypocritical anti-Yanqui rhetoric? Maybe. Is it worth losing sleep over? Not at all.

Incidentally, we provide a healthy look at the risks of buying Nicaraguan property in Moon Living Abroad in Nicaragua starting on page 186. You can find a brief history there starting on page 26; in Moon Nicaragua we cover history in greater detail on pages 367-381.